know that God hears me, I know God wants me to converse with Him and let my needs be known I know there is nothing impossible with God. My dilemma is that I think we have lost the deeper meaning of prayer. I tend to doubt when we (meaning the church i attend and my circle of christian friends) mostly just pray that people get healed from some physical ailment and when they recover(which I believe they would have even without our prayers) we say “what a miracle, God healed them.” Really?? These are my doubts, just being honest . Do we really believe God only did this good thing because we asked? Would He have actually with held good from somebody because we didn’t petition Him on their behalf? I don’t buy it. I think first and foremost prayer is to be private, just me and God, for the sole purpose of making my mind and will come into alignment with his, prayer is about changing me and as that happens the circumstances around me change because now my decision making is based around His will which in turn changes the course of my life. I think when petitioning God on someone else’s behalf, what we should be asking is, Lord give me the wisdom to know what I need to do to BE Jesus for that person right now. I feel like it’s just a cop out or something to just make ourselves feel better by saying “oh we prayed for you.” I think these are the times Jesus was talking about when He said take up your cross and follow me. We don’t care enough to be bothered into action. Prayer is a mystery to me. Looking forward to some input.
Hi Angie,
I'll take issue on a couple of things in your post. Prayer can be private or public. I love corporate prayer, prayer meetings can be electric. Oh to be a fly on the wall of Leipzig Baptist Church during the 1980s prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall which historians attribute as a direct cause or that historic event. More importantly look again at the Lord's prayer, it's written as a corporate prayer, 'Our Father who art in Heaven,... give us this day our daily bread ... If you have a crisis I would urge you to ask God in a prayer meeting to sort it for you. Why a corporate prayer and not just a private prayer that's between you and God? God loves to show off His power and bring about extraordinary outcomes that lots of people can testify to and glorify His name, Acts 12:5-17.
If you're finding prayer meetings a bit mundane and boring, maybe you should work on your relationship with God and and try to bring into the meeting some of your excitement and passion.
On the whole though, prayer is very private and personal. It is you and God communicating directly as opposed to via some by priest. Sometimes we take that so much for granted and we don't realise the significance of it.
God wants us to talk to him like He is is our best friend, spouse, father, in fact the relationship is closer than all of those. He want us to tell Him all about our day, how we are feeling, all our problems, hang ups and issues and struggles. More importantly, He wants our praise, what it is and and why we love Him, a recount of His blessings and gifts, adoration and expressions of love. Then stop, think and meditate and listen to what God is saying to you.
Hope that helps.
